The tuba blast was admittedly unexpected, but

When U.S. citizens think about Geronimo, I am sure many things come to mind. He was a courageous man...hence the "battlecry" of people leaving the perfectly good airplane from thousands of feet in the air...or many other crazy stunts. I will cop to having made a few "Geronimo!" yells as I did some "courageous" (read "he was young and had no conception of how bad it was going to hurt when the ramp collapsed, the handlebars twisted over the front, his pant leg caught in the bike chain, and he introduced virtually every square inch of his body) things, such as taking a bike whose handlebars could not be tightened off a rather sizable ramp. Should I mention that particular maneuver did not end well?
Other people hear Geronimo and thinking of "Indian raids" in which violent, murderous Indians attack innocent, peaceful settlers. I will not at this time go into the flaws in that scenario, but many people think that when they hear Geronimo.
Perhaps some more educated people think of the tremendous resistance he put up wherein with less than 30 followers he eluded, outwitted, and outfought over 5000 soldiers. Perhaps others think of his many trips off reservation or perhaps even his brief stint with Buffalo Bill Cody's traveling Wild West Show.
I wonder how many think of him in a Cadillac. How many people can even mentally conceive of Geronimo driving a car in the "Last Bison Hunt", staged by a traveling Wild West show? These are some of the points Phillip Deloria makes in Indians in Unexpected Places."
His underlying point is too important to be missed. Hollywood, pop culture history, and the mythology of Manifest Destiny have assigned a place to Native Americans.
This view is so drilled into our minds from the word go that many people might never realize the integration of Native American and "white" (itself a misnomer; U.S. culture is already an amalgamation of many racial cultures) culture.
Sure, many people know about Jim Thorpe and probably a few about men such as Hall of Fame pitcher "Chief" Bender or Olympic Gold Medalist Billy Mills...but how many people are aware of the sustained success Carlisle and later Haskell had...with Pan-Indian teams?
Because such things do not fit our preconceived notions of what it means to "be Indian" people often dismiss the very possibility. That actually speaks to a subtle, unintentional, yet very real racism that exists in culture today...if someone does not "look" or "talk" or "dress" "Indian" then many people cannot conceive of them as BEING Indian...as if "Indianness" is derived from cultural expectations rather than true realities.
It is interesting to note that tribal rolls used to require ancestral proof...and now in some cases there are anecdotal stories that to be enrolled requires accessing portions of cultural trappings. It is even more interesting to note that I see this as neither a right nor wrong issue.
This really has no ending, so I will go with one I find amusing. If you think the fabled picture of Geronimo in one of the first cars ever made is unexpected, consider this; according to his autobiography, he was, for a time, a Sunday school teacher. Did you expect that?